


What The Water Hides

by AntiGravitas



Series: Festive Ficlets [3]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Animagus, Animagus Newt Scamander, Hogwarts, M/M, New Year's Eve, Newt and Percival go travelling, Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28456989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntiGravitas/pseuds/AntiGravitas
Summary: Percival had wanted to do something for the festive season, but for some reason Newt hadn't been keen. Somehow they end up in Scotland over New Year, and Newt has something to tell Percival, something he's never admitted to anyone else.An animagus!Newt fic to finish off the year.
Relationships: Original Percival Graves/Newt Scamander
Series: Festive Ficlets [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2069169
Comments: 2
Kudos: 68





	What The Water Hides

They spend Christmas in Scotland, up in Hogsmeade where the snow is thick on the ground and the nights are so cold the hearth is barely able to warm them. They sleep with double the blankets they’d normally use and thread them through with heating charms, and where that doesn’t work the tangling together of their limbs makes up for the rest. By the time the end of the year creeps round the worst of the blizzards are past but the snow is still piled high across the countryside and the bitterness of the night air is sharp enough to pierce almost any charmed coat.

New Year’s Eve finds them down in Newt’s case when they should be attending the private party over at Hogwarts, their dinner jackets hung over the back of the stable doors, Newt down on his knees in the straw and Percival next to him with towels and hot water and only the barest idea what the hell he’s going to do if anything turns out to be expected of him. 

“Almost there,” Newt says to him, wiping his cheek on his forearm, his hands still busy. 

Percival nods and adjusts his grip on the basin of water and wonders if he should try soothing the Thestral mare or if that would simply earn him a taste of her teeth. He’s never seen a Thestral foal and quite honestly he doesn’t know what to expect. That he’s here to witness this now is apparently unusual, but the mare in question is sickly and Newt had been concerned and quite frankly Percival will take this warm and dusty stable over the stilted conversation and undisguised stares they’d have likely gotten from the party at the castle. 

Still, he thinks as the mare swings her great skeletal head round and bares her fangs, could it not have been one of the Mooncalfs instead?

The foal arrives just as the dancing would have been about to begin, and by the time Newt is satisfied the mother is caring for it, they’ve completely missed their chance to attend at all. They stand behind the stable door, newly scrubbed up and careful not to be intrusive, looking in at the mare tending to her new colt.

“They’ll be all right now then?” Percival asks. To him the creatures look as skeletal and unhealthy as they ever do, but Newt has a better eye for such things than him.

“They’ll be fine now,” Newt confirms. He looks sideways at Percival and gives an apologetic dip of his head. “Sorry to make you miss the party. You could have gone on ahead, you know.”

“Not damned likely! I won’t have you abandoning me to that fate,” Percival mutters. 

Newt snorts laughter, pleased as he always is every time Percival thumbs his nose at society convention. He pushes away from the stable door, reaching up to pull the top section around and closed. “We should at least have some food. And some wine.”

“Well now _that,”_ Graves replies, “is the most sensible idea I’ve heard all evening.”

Percival doesn’t know exactly why they’re out here like this. They’d been in the kitchen of his townhouse in New York, back at the beginning of December, when he’d thought it time to begin a gentle probing of the other man’s boundaries on holiday traditions. They’ve been together almost six months now, and Percival has no desire to crowd Newt or put him under any unnecessary strain, but for the first time in years he has  _ vacation days _ , or something similar, which is to say his timesheet is almost illegally full and if he accrues any more overtime he’s going to be in danger of a disciplinary, as bizarre as that may sound. 

“Go away, Percival,” Seraphina had said to him. “I don’t want to see you again until the new year.”

He’d thought they might spend the time in the city, with perhaps a day trip out to the country for a change of scenery, but when he’d suggested it Newt had shut the idea down so quickly Percival had almost been offended.  _ Had  _ been offended truth be told.  _ Well, _ he’d thought at the time.  _ Perhaps I am crowding the guy a little too much. _

They’d gone on with their day and their evening, and later in bed, when Percival had been almost asleep, Newt had said, “I need to go to Scotland for the new year.”

There’d been a choice then, Percival had been able to feel it, sharp-edged and a little dangerous. The type of choice where the answer is unclear, and a poor grip on it will lead to getting cut. He’d listened to the silence, to the tension he could feel hovering on the air between them, and then he’d rolled over to lie on his side and look at Newt. 

“Can I come?”

Newt, on his back, had turned his head sideways to look at him then, and Percival had known immediately he’d made the right choice. He’d reached out to cup Newt’s cheek in his palm, and draw him in to kiss, and then Newt had tangled his fingers in his hair and pressed in close and that had been the end of the discussion.

It’s close on eleven by the time they set out food on the table in front of Newt’s shed. The inside of his case is warm and lit with the golden glow of fairy lights, their inhabitants sleeping quietly in their little globes, sated on nectar. Their only real nod to the season is the tinsel Newt has wrapped around the lattice fencing surrounding the tiny orchard, although half of it is apparently stuffed inside the Niffler’s nest again.

Percival slices a little of the baked ham off and plates it up, watching Newt out of the corner of his eye. The other man is fiddling with the cheese they’d picked up before they came over, and Percival can read the distraction in him. He’s been like this since they arrived, enough that Percival had noticed immediately. Since neither of them are particularly interested in the minutiae of Christmas they’d passed it mostly out walking, or eating dinner upstairs in the Broomsticks, or, for a large part of it, in bed. Percival’s not complaining about any of that of course, Newt had been attentive and fully present for the most important parts, but every time a silence fell or the excitement of whatever mischief they’d been up to had passed, that distant look had crept back into his eyes, inevitable and unsettling.

They eat in silence, Newt’s eyes on the apple trees, and he could be listening for sounds from the nearby stable, but Percival doesn’t think so. Eventually, the food is finished and Percival takes out his pocket watch. Twenty minutes to midnight he sees, and pursing his lips slips the watch back into place. 

“So,” he says, and when Newt looks up at him, he raises an eyebrow in query. “Not quite a half hour but more than a minute to midnight. What would you like to be doing when the clock strikes twelve, Mr Scamander?”

He’s rewarded by the flicker of mischievous interest in Newt’s eyes as the other man sets down his plate and dusts off his lap. 

“Well, Mr Graves. I rather think I’d like not to notice it.”

Percival laughs and goes to him, and then they retreat to the soft grass beneath the apple trees, and under the glow of the lanterns he presses Newt back and follows him down, and then down again, his fingers in Newt’s belt and the other man’s in his hair. True to Newt’s request, it’s well past midnight before either of them notice the time again.

The apple trees are bright with fairy lights and the soft silver glow of their enchanted fruit, grown for one of Newt’s many beasts, and by their light Percival drifts and reflects on half a year of a life so different he’d not have believed it had he been told but a year before. Grindelwald is a memory now, but one whose claws are still deeply embedded in Graves’ soul. He opens his eyes a crack to the silvered light and frowns unseeing across the grass to the lantern placed at the foot of one of the trees. He’s not thought of Grindelwald in  _ weeks. _ A year since he was rescued, ten months since he met Newt and six since this strange and wonderful romance began, and...two weeks. Two weeks since he’s thought of Grindelwald. He can remember the exact time he thought of him last, when he’d sat at his desk in the Woolworth Building and the lights had flickered from some scheduled maintenance work, and he’d almost dropped his pen in shock. The lights had flickered like that two hours before he’d been captured and at the time he’d frowned because perhaps maintenance needed to be called, and it had only been much, much later he’d worked out it had been the exact moment Gellert Grindelwald had compromised the building’s wards.

“I have to go out.”

Percival blinks and props himself up on his elbows, running his fingers through his mussed hair to straighten it. Newt is lying on his back staring up at the interlocking boughs of the apple trees, and that distant look is back in his eyes. 

“Excuse me?”

Newt sighs, then turns to meet Percival’s eyes, and the cheerfulness in the look he gives him is entirely for Percival’s benefit. Percival knows that look and he doesn’t like it.

“I have to go visit an old friend.”

Graves shakes his head, confused. “At this time of night? Who?”

For a long few moments Newt is silent, just watching him, until a small beating of alarm starts up in Percival’s chest. Mystery is not Newt’s way, not deliberately at least, and he doesn’t like the sound of this. “Newt?”

“Do you-” Newt begins, then he stops and looks away, shaking his head.

“Newt, hey,” Percival says, reaching out to touch his cheek and draw his attention back. That pulse of alarm is beginning to heighten and he makes sure to keep it off his face. Even so he realises Newt’s seen right through his attempts when the other man flicks his eyes up to meet his gaze and then winces.

“I’m sorry, Percival. I’m not trying to deceive you, I just. I have a promise to keep.”

“Okay,” Percival says. He wants to sound at ease, he wants to sound confidant and sure of Newt’s intentions, but he can’t hide the confusion in his voice, or the trepidation that’s never been so quick to spring up before as here right now.

“Do you want this?” Newt asks suddenly, and when Percival frowns, eyebrows raised in incomprehension, he sighs sharply and turns onto his side, pushing himself upright. “Do you want me- I mean, do you want this to carry on? Us. This. Between us.”

Thoroughly taken aback, Percival pushes himself upright too until he’s sitting, facing Newt. “Newt, I’m not sure what- I mean  _ of course _ I want you, I want to stay with you.  _ Be _ with you.” What is going on? he wonders to himself. What is this sudden anxiety on the younger man’s part? Is this a milestone, a point of no turning back for them? Has Newt reached some kind of crossroads at which he stands undecided? The knot in the pit of Percival’s stomach suggests to him that perhaps he ought to have addressed that faraway look in his lover’s eyes the moment he first saw it. “Newt, why are you asking this now? Has something happened?”

Newt licks his lips and there’s a brightness in his eyes that’s either eagerness or anxiety, or perhaps something of both. “Not yet,” he says softly.

“Not...yet?”

“Come with me,” Newt says. “Please.”

“To see this...old friend?” Graves asks slowly, still trying to get a firm read on the emotions that are driving his partner.

“Yes,” Newt says, and reaches out with a hesitance that makes Percival hurt, to brush his knuckles down Percival’s cheek.

“All right. Wherever you want.”

It takes them half an hour to get where Newt wants to go. The night is clear and bitterly cold, the stars bright as pixie lights in the sky above, and the snow is up past their knees. They trudge through the gates of Hogwarts, following the cleared road until they cut across the grounds and around the edge of the Quidditch pitch towards the lake. The lights of the castle burn brightly in the darkness and even at this late hour they can hear the distant music of the party, still ongoing in the great hall. Up around the towers the eerie glow of a troupe of ghosts cavorting and waltzing in the night catches Percival’s eye until he almost stumbles into a hidden hole and Newt has to grab his arm to save him.

They hear the lake long before they see it, and it’s only because the sky is so clear and the blanketing snow so absolute that the sliver of the quarter moon casts so much light. It outlines the ripples on the water in silver and by its light Percival can make out the intensity of Newt’s expression. He looks focussed and unafraid, but the hand that grips Percival’s own is tight, his thickly gloved fingers secure.

“I’m surprised it’s not completely frozen,” Percival remarks.

“Not yet,” Newt says. “Soon though.”

It’s only when they reach an open stretch of shoreline that Newt stops. He stares out across the waters of the lake and there’s something bright and alive in his eyes that Percival much prefers to the hesitation of earlier. 

Newt turns to him then, and although he doesn’t let go of Percival’s hand he does squeeze it lightly, a gesture Percival returns with a firmness that’s as much intended to reassure himself as it is to steady Newt.

“When I was a boy here at Hogwarts,” Newt says. “I used to come out to the shore every day to look for Plimpies and anything else I could find. I was out here one day and I found a creature, a beast. It was wounded and I, well, I helped it. It wasn’t very friendly at first, but I uhm, I persevered. And it took all summer, you know. But back then, well I had the time.”

Percival shifts uncertainly, curious but not quite able to see where this is leading. Newt’s eyes are bright in the moonlight, and he can see the smile on the other man’s lips, an expression of memories that are both good and bittersweet. Percival knows that Newt’s childhood was hardly happy, and that his time at Hogwarts ended poorly, in fact a large part of his surprise had been that of all places Newt had wanted to come  _ here _ to celebrate the season, but he’d let it pass. 

“I did everything I could to care for the beast, to gain its trust and learn about it. It wasn’t supposed to be here you see, it had gotten into a scrap with another male in a territory some distance away and had dragged itself nearly twelve miles to escape. I...I really, I don’t know- respected that determination I suppose. To live. To not give up, despite adversity. He was such a proud beast, and not very gentle even when you got to know him. But I did. Eventually. I got to know him and I helped him and well. He got better in the end.”

“What kind of beast?” Percival asks finally, as the silence begins to stretch.

Newt smiles, and for a second Graves thinks he’ll evade the question, but then he looks out across the water. “He’s a Kelpie,” he replies simply.

“A water demon?” Percival exclaims, unable to quite keep the surprise from his voice. “Aren’t they-?” 

He stops himself, aware that the next words that want to spill out of his mouth will likely irritate Newt no end, but aware that Newt’s heard them regardless. The magizoologist turns a wry, understanding smile on him and shakes his head.

“Yes, Kelpies are  _ very _ dangerous. I shouldn’t have had anything to do with him at that age - if he’d decided to eat me there really wouldn’t have been an awful lot I could have done to stop him. I didn’t have the spells back then if I’m honest.”

“Did you...tell a teacher?” Graves hazards, already knowing the answer.

“Not bloody likely!” Newt laughs. “I thought about it, but in the end I kept him to myself. He was getting better and, and I was learning and we were, well, I won’t say friends exactly, because Kelpies really are quite unpleasant even if you’re familiar to them. But we got along. And, and I liked him a lot. I still do.”

Percival casts a wary eye out over the lake, frowning into the depths of water that seems suddenly darker than it had before. “He’s still out there?”

Again Newt shakes his head and smiles. “No. But he does come back to see me at new year.”

This time Percival can’t help the lift of his eyebrows. He wants to keep his expression neutral and give Newt no reason to doubt his intentions but at the same time he remembers the Kelpie from his studies at Ilvermorny, and although the haze of the intervening years is getting thicker he still remembers the salient points. They eat people, trick them into coming close and then drag them down to drown and devour in the depths. They’re shapeshifters too and he has absolutely no doubt that the local MoM would absolutely want to know that one of them visits the grounds of the school. No wonder Newt was cagey about bringing him out here tonight.

“I trust you’re dealing with him appropriately,” he says carefully, and this time Newt laughs outright. 

“I wouldn’t let any harm come to the students, or anyone at Hogwarts,” Newt replies solemnly. “No really, Percival. Clarence isn’t harmless, but he doesn’t come here except to see me, and then only once a year. Sometimes he doesn’t even show up. Most years really, in fact I haven’t seen him for the past three. I’m starting to think he might have passed on or moved away for good. But anyway, even when he does come back once we’re done he goes back to his own territory, he doesn’t stay here.”

“Clarence,” Percival repeats, shaking his head.

Newt tilts his head. “It’s a good name.”

Graves huffs soft laughter, his breath clouding on the air. He’s not sure what to make of all this really, but one thing he does know - Newt may appear reckless, but never with other people’s lives, certainly not if such a thing were to lead to one of his beasts being condemned. No, if Newt says the beast comes here once and then vanishes again, well, he believes him. 

“That’s your secret?” he asks softly.

Across the lake there’s a sudden explosion of sound and a flare of crimson and sapphire brilliance: a last batch of fireworks being let off from the towers of the castle. Against the clear night sky they’re dazzling, and their light flickers out across the lake turning it red and blue and green. In the shifting light Percival can see the paleness of the other man’s face. 

“No,” Newt says, smiling. “This is.”

Crunching through the snow Newt steps closer to the water’s edge and bends down to peer into the water. Balancing carefully he pulls off one thick glove and then reaches out to touch his fingertips to the water, watching the ripples sparkle in the light of the fireworks. Smiling, he shakes them dry and then replaces his glove.

“Newt?”

“I did everything I could to help Clarence,” Newt says. “And it occurred to me afterwards it would have been much easier had I been able to communicate with him properly from the start. I mean, that’s always the way, but I wondered if I could do something to improve the odds. If being so  _ human _ was what was holding me back. Perhaps if I could be something closer to a beast, then I’d do better. I honestly never expected it to work so well, or quite like it did. It’s uhm, a bit of a risk apparently, as to what happens. No guarantees, you know?”

Percival frowns and shakes his head slowly. Clearly, he is missing something here. He takes a hesitant step forward, not sure if he should be trying to convince Newt not to do something foolish, but completely unable to say what that might be.

Newt sees the concern on his face and smiles again. “It’s all right, Percival. I’ve never shown anyone else this, not even Dumbledore, well- except, it doesn’t matter. Look, please don’t be afraid. There’s really no need to be afraid.”

And then he steps back and into the water. 

Percival has seen such a transformation before, but never into a beast like this. He recognises it the moment the slip and slide of magic subsides, wizard into something else, something that stands at the water’s edge, large and hulking and draped all over with reeds that glisten in the light of the fireworks across the lake.

“You’re an animagus,” he breathes. “A...Kelpie. Is that-? How? I mean-”

Cautiously, although he knows this is Newt,  _ knows it,  _ Percival takes a step closer. The Kelpie’s head is huge, and for all its fine sculpturing bears a feeling of weightiness that speaks to the power of the beast. A great reed-strewn neck arches behind from broad shoulders, and although it’s difficult to see properly in the light, from the way he’s holding himself Percival thinks that the beast has no legs in this form, but rather great fins obscured by the curtaining fall of river weeds and water thyme. 

He swallows, still amazed and frankly a little intimated, but also curious and just a little amused in a vaguely hysterical sort of way, that Newt has once more found a method of astonishing him into silence. It doesn’t last long, and when he lifts his hand to touch the long nose of the beast the Kelpie snorts and butts at his fingers. Percival remembers then that these things bite, but not Newt, surely not Newt…

“A magical beast animagus. Do you know how damned rare that is?” Graves laughs. Then he shakes his head, astounded all over again at the strange twists to his life that Newt keeps on revealing. “You were damned lucky you got Kelpie! What would you have done if you’d turned out to be a Plimpy?”

With a whirl of slippery reeds that sprays Percival all over with lake water, Newt transforms back. “Opened up a line of communication with the Merpeople probably,” he says.

Percival laughs, because of course he’d do that. Then he shakes his head, staring in bemused wonder at the man standing up to his ankles in the lake water. Really, he doesn’t even know what to say. He could  _ start _ with ‘you’re not registered’ and go from there into a full-blown argument, but- but times have changed, and so has he. The world isn’t black and white, it never has been and he’s always known that. The last few months have simply brought that idea into a sharper, more resolute focus than it had ever been before.

“Why Kelpie?” Percival asks.

“I didn’t get a choice, you know,” Newt chides him. Then he pauses, taking a moment to glance upwards at the patter of fireworks in the sky. Someone’s found an extra box to let off because the intensity of the explosions has reached a fever pitch. “But for me, they’re freedom. Determination. They’re intelligent and they, they survive on their own. For as long as it takes.”

“You don’t have to be alone any more,” Percival says softly. 

For a long moment there’s silence between them, and then Newt swallows, looking up at Percival from beneath the fall of his fringe. “Neither do you,” he says.

When Newt lifts his hand and holds it out to Percival, it’s not out of doubt that Graves hesitates. It’s because the difference that a year has made to his life is suddenly so starkly apparent to him that it makes him feel almost like he could faint from it. The world is a very different place now to what it had been a year ago, to anything he might have ever predicted. And yet, he is still here.

“It’s all right,” Newt says. “I promise not to drag you under. I mean, not- you. Kelpies don’t  _ always _ drown people, a lot of that's just legend and, and bad eggs. You know, one bad apple and all that. I mean, they’re really quite lovely beasts when you get to know them-”

“Newt,” Percival says.

And then, with the fireworks still bursting above, and the new year rolling onwards around them, he reaches out and gently, resolutely, accepts Newt’s hand. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> So what form would Newt’s animagus take? This one’s a hard one because my money is on Newt’s _patronus_ being a salamander, thus linking him to Tina, but animagus and patronus forms are apparently often the same, and salamander animagus form just...doesn’t fit Newt to me. Though I admit it could be hilarious. JKR apparently said Newt’s patronus is a big spoiler for the second movie, although we were never told it. That leaves us with Kelpie, Zouwu, Salamander and...Matagots? Seems unlikely. Anyway, Kelpie sounded fun, and if you dig around out there apparently there's official merch that _might_ support the idea.
> 
> I learn so much every time I write fics. Did you know tinsel was originally invented in Nuremberg in 1610? It’s been around a long time in various forms.
> 
> Whenever you're reading this, I hope the future brings you better than anything that's gone before. Happy New Year, all.


End file.
